I'm really happy to see the brainSCANr project through to some form of completion with that second paper. I can't wait to share the other three papers coming out. Humbly, they're awesome. Well, two of them are; the third's okay.

I've also been doing some writing for the O'Reilly Radar (no, not the evil O'Reilly, the good one):

Also, a couple of weeks ago I was invited to attend Foo Camp which was a hell of a weekend. I really could (should?) do a whole post about my experiences, but wow there are a lot of really smart, talented people out there doing some great things. That's a really fluffy, non-specific sentence, forgive me, but I just don't have the mental energy to break all my conversations from that event down into details yet.

I've done a lot of science lecturing and outreach stuff this year as well. Deep breath. Here we go:

Spoke twice at swissnex San Francisco, totally independently; once about my actual research and once about my science outreach.

Gave a zombie brains talk (with a real human brain specimen!) at two local libraries for about 50-100 12-16 year olds.

Speaking at NASA Ames in a few weeks about my research and outreach.

Was the Keynote Speaker for the Annual Meeting of the San Francisco Neurological Society, also speaking about zombie brains, which was wild.

Speaking at the International Neuropsychological Society in Oslo in a few days.

Was invited by a University of Chicago neuroscience student group to give a talk there in October.

Will be speaking at the Allen Brain Institute in August about brainSCANr.

Presented a paper, “Medusa to Slake-moth: The Neurobiological Basis of Hypnagogia, Paralysis, Hallucinations, and Other Magical Abilities of Literary Monsters”, with my friend and mentor Roby Duncan at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (which we're hopefully turning into a peer-review publication).

I've done a lot of speaking at Bay Area companies about my data analyses with Uber.

There we go! That's 2012 so far. Holy crap typing all of that out is crazy. How the hell did I get here? Because I'm pretty sure last time I looked I was wasting time procrastinating and not doing my PhD research.

I wish I could convey to you all how amazingly surreal it is for me to be in this place in my life. Having gone from a... weird... upbringing, losing many people who were near and dear mentors to me, and getting kicked out of college because of my shite grades to... whatever this is, with family and friends and everything else, is astonishing.

I know this post may read like braggadocio, but believe me when I say this kind of thing is necessary for me. My close friend/mentor/dad-by-wager (long story) Roby once told me, when I was in the midst of a years-long bout of self-doubt and uncertainty, that every now and then I need to praise myself; rather than just focusing on what I'm not doing/accomplishing, I should also allow myself the guilty pleasure of basking in successes.

So here I am. Typing all of this out so I can say for myself "hell yes" to keep motivated and moving forward.

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Who I Am

Neuroscientist combining large scale data-mining, machine-learning techniques, and brain computer interfacing with hypothesis-driven experimental research to understand the relationships between the human frontal lobes, cognition, and disease. Into really geeky stuff. World zombie neuroscience expert. Also run brainSCANr.com with my wife, Jessica.